I had said in an earlier post that I would not start a thread until such time as it could be more of a definate 'what I have done', rather than just a 'what I am planning to do - possibly'. Finally I have managed to make a start, and even though I have currently only got half a circle of track to run on I have made some progress on rolling stock

Firstly a Warship body shell.I painted this using Vallejo acrylic paints. I was originally planning to use Precision paints because they produce the correct colour, but in the end it seemed expensive to buy a bottle for the little I would need for a T gauge shell, so just picked the Vallejo colour which looked to be the closest.The first image shows my attempt at hand painting the yellow warning panel. Painting of the windows, and adding a BR logo is still to do.The second image shows the loco with a coach.

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Just to prove that I can not stick to a theme (as if the fact that I am modelling in N, 009, HOn30, HO, On30 & SM32 as well as T was not enough to prove this!) I have also started on a 50' boxcar. I do not have the chassis for this yet. The rather cruel close up here shows the quality of the body shell, but also clearly shows how terible my painting is. All I can say is that it looks OK at a normal viewing distance! For this boxcar I planned a livery which I could decal without needing to produce full body decals. That basically means choosing a livery which does not use white lettering (as I do not have an alps printer), so chose a Soo Line boxcar. This car has an all white body, red doors (which are easy to paint as the doors as separate items) and black lettering. Creating the decals is next to do, but I have already prepared the artwork.

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Finally a quick photo if the PWM controller I am using which is designed around a Picaxe microcontroller. This is still in a developement stage - the two wires sticking up from the top of the board are taking the places of the two push buttons for accelarate/decelarate. The controller does work, but I am not putting to much effort into it until I have at least a whole cirlce of track so I can really test the number of speed steps and the acceleration rate and adjust the software for best performance.

The loco is from OzRailwaysTstuff, which I ordered from Shapeways as part of a larger order but which is also avaialble from TGauge.com.

I tried acrylics on this shell after earlier failures using this kind of paint, but it seems to be OK this time. Previously I had tried using it for 009 wagon bodies created from cut down 3.5mm and 4mm scale bodyshells. When I did this I found that after two days I could scrape the paint stright off with my fingernail, even though I had cleaned the shell thoroughly. After this failure I just put them on one side an forgot about them, however about a month later I came across them and when I again tried to scrape the paint off I could not do so. This leads me to belive that although these paints seem to be dry after only about 10 minutes they are not fully hardened until days or even weeks later.

I had said that this thread would be more for what I had done, rather than what I was planning to do at some time in the future, however as the forum is so quiet at the moment....

Firstly, something that has actually happened (as opposed to something that I have done) is that my latest order of track plus one chassis arrived. This now means that I finally have a complete loop of track which makes testing far easier. This also raises the chance that I could build a layout with the small oval of track I have just to show people what T gauge is actualy like.

Now that I have the chassis I was waiting for, and can measure it accurately, I also plan to try and design some US outline freight cars and get them printed at shapeways. Initially I plan to try a 40' boxcar with roofwalks and also an old style 4 tub pickle car. I currently only have google sketchup avaialble. not sure if this will be up to the job or not, but I guess the easiest way to find out is to give it a try.

I use blender and am happy with it - it's free. I sometimes wonder if it would be better to use sketchup but I've invested so much time learning blender...

also happy to help.

tip #1 has got to be design something simple and upload it to shapeways to get the hang of their thin wall checker. It's very dissapointing to spend weeks working on a model, then upload it and speend weeks more removing all the detail...

With the general caveat that I do not really now what I am doing yet, I have loaded my first model to shapeways and included a test print on my last order.

The US 40' boxcar to fit a commercial chassis, and the trail of a British 4 wheeler wagon, are both taking longer than I would have hoped so I decided to try a print of a series 2 Land Rover than I had created whilst learning sketch up.

I am still awiting delivery of my order, but if it works out OK then I will tidy up my hastily created Shapeways shop and put the item up for general sale

I have now added multi pack options to the Land Rover model that I had uploaded to Shapeways, so as to keep down the cost per vehicle.

Whilst creating the 3 and 6 packs I also took the opportunity to create variations to the basic vehicle, so the 3 pack now contains my original model plus one with a spare wheel on the bonnet and another with a van body. The 6 pack contains 2 of each.

I have not printed any of these yet, which is why they are set to Beta, but I have sucesfully printed the single version so am hopeful that there will not be a problem.

I am also working on a set of US 40' freight cars (wood boxcar, composite boxcar, reefer and possibly a stock car). These will use the 19M coach chassis as that is all that I currently have to measure and try, although I plan to try them with the adjustable chassis as well and hopefully if any changes are needed then they will be easy to do. NB the 19M chassis will need to be cut for these models, so they will be to scale length.

Here is the first view of the 40' boxcar body that I have been working on. Note that this is not currently finished, and I have only loaded this to shapeways to see the renedering, and it is not currently for sale.

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This is the wooden bodied boxcar with a roofwalk, and is one of a number of variations that I have planned if this first one works out.

This is an early cut of the design - it currently does not have any door detail on the other side, nor does it yet have any ladders, but now that I can see that it has passed the basic wall thickness checker I will get these added and resubmit it. When I have had a sucesful print from this I will then put it for sale in my shop.